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Each year, the farmers around the world who produce our food (fruits, vegetables, grains) get the equivalent of a “grade” on a giant “group project.” For 2014 they got another A+ as they have for many years. The “test” entails thousands of food samples, which the USDA collects from normal US food channels and then scrutinizes for pesticide residues using extremely sensitive laboratory testing methods. They are checking for any detectable residues (41% of samples have none) and whether any of the detectable residues exceed the conservative “tolerances” set by the EPA (99.6% of the samples met that exacting standard). This means that our regulatory/farming system is working extremely well! Farmers are able to produce crops without the inefficiency and quality issues associated with excessive pest damage, and consumers are able to safely enjoy what they grow. The official conclusion from the USDA is “These Pesticide Data Program data show that, overall, pesticide residues found on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pose no safety concern.”

The 10,750 samples the USDA tested in 2014

Chemical pesticides are only one part of the pest control regime, but an important one. The chemical pesticides in use today are predominantly low in mammalian toxicity, but for all pesticides the EPA sets detailed rules for how they can be used (e.g. maximum rates, periods of time before harvest…). These are designed to ensure that any residues that remain at the consumer level are below a “tolerance” based on a rigorous, multi-factorial risk assessment by the EPA. The tolerance is generally 100 times less than a dose that could cause any ill effect. The allowed residues are also lower than the levels of natural pesticidal compounds that many crops make to defend themselves.

The 2014 USDA “test” is called the Pesticide Detection Program or PDP, and it has been conducted every year since 1991. For 2014 tests were done on 10,750 samples including 21 types of fruits or vegetables, two grains, two types of infant formula and salmon. The scientists detected a total of 22,890 specific pesticide residues of which 98.5% were below tolerance or at such low levels they couldn’t even be properly quantified (see table below).

Details on the 2014 detections

I appreciate the fact that the USDA makes this data available and transparent. It allows us to see that not only are most of the residues below tolerance, a great many of them are more than 10, 100 or even 1,000 times lower than the tolerance (see column chart below - all to the left of the center bar are no-issue detections, but 84% are far below).

Note how many of the detections are 10 to 100 or 100 to 1000 times lower than the tolerance!

There are some minor differences between crops. In the two charts below, the light green bars show how many of the detections in a given crop were below tolerance, and the dark green bars show what percent were 10 or more times lower than the tolerance. The samples of infant formula had, happily, either no detections (dairy-based formula) or a few detections that were between 1000 and 5000 times lower than the very low tolerance (soy-base formula, 7 of 527 samples). Oats and rice also had few detections and those at very low levels.

In this chart the light green bar shows what was below tolerance while dark green highlights detections far below tolerance